Stan

A bilingual play for children which explores communication, friendship, identity, the family unit and dinosaurs

Pixar’s Inside Out meets Night at the Museum

Sam is a happy, dinosaur loving 8-year-old whose world turns upside down after his parents separate. As he takes himself off to the far end of the school field he meets Alex, a deaf girl with a vivid imagination – and an impressive collection of dinosaurs.

Bonding over boring packed lunches and their favourite fierce T-Rex, the pair form an unlikely friendship. When things at home become too difficult for Sam, Alex whisks him away on an astonishing adventure to meet the almighty Stan, the gigantic T-Rex at Manchester Museum.

A powerful and poignant new play by Sarah Emmott, Stan celebrates the power of play, the joy of communication and the positive force of friendship. Featuring awesome animated dinosaurs, Stan is written and performed in English and British Sign Language and embeds creative captions within the set.

An equal theatre experience for deaf & hearing audiences

Written and performed in English and BSL and featuring closed captions throughout, Stan offered an equal experience to both deaf and hearing audiences. This equality was continued outside the performance space. Audiences were greeted at the box office in English and BSL and the post-show workshop included a BSL interpreter.

The use of projection meant that Stan used an entirely digital set, allowing for the embedding of creative captions that used written English and simple illustration to translate both the spoken English and British Sign Language used in the play.

A realistic animation of Stan the dinosaur made for a captivating experience, using bass-heavy rumbling and roaring sounds as Stan stomped around the audience to fully immerse deaf audiences. Watch a behind the scenes look at Triple Dot Makers’ animation and video design for STAN.

Sarah stands on a stage with a group of school children. They are all making dinosaur claw shapes with their hands.

Participation

Stan’s wraparound activity allowed audiences , venues and partners alike to truly benefit from the play as a bilingual, educational experience. From training opportunities to dinosaur bone boxes, we ensured that every theme of the play could be unpacked and processed in a safe and open environment.

Click to scroll right and learn more.

Sarah kneels stage in front of the audience during a workshop.

Post-show workshop

The post-show workshop, facilitated by a member of the Art with Heart team, created a safe environment for children to unpack their emotions by responding to different elements of the play, identifying objects that Sam carries with him and then discussing their importance. Together, we constructed letters to the play’s characters with the children. The workshop benefited the children in the audience by helping them to understand one another’s emotions while benefiting parents and guardians who were able to understand their children better.

Two actors dressed as school children sit side by side on a stage. They are both using BSL.

Deaf awareness workshop

Attended by 150 people, we ran three
deaf awareness workshops in partnership with Manchester Deaf Centre, led by a deaf facilitator. The online workshops, which were hosted by Z-arts, artsdepot and Midlands Arts Centre, were available to the public, and attended by staff members from our other touring venues. This offered invaluable deaf awareness training to ensure that venues were ready to welcome deaf audiences on the Stan tour.

Education pack

417 school children came to watch Stan, and each school or community group was given a copy of our education pack and British Sign Language (BSL) video, ensuring conversation about changing family, deaf awareness and dinosaurs could continue in the classroom.

A media cups mini reporter interviewing Gemma Green who played Mum in Stan

Media Cubs

We created opportunities for Greater Manchester young people in media & journalism. Partnering with Media Cubs, an organization developing media skills in young people, we invited burgeoning journalists to report at the Stan premiere.

Click here to watch the Media Cubs report

Two pairs of adult shoes are next to each other on a shoe bench. One pair has a toy dinosaur sticking out of each shoe.

Dinosaur object handling box

We partnered with the Manchester Museum to create immersive education for young explorers. Members of the Museum’s curatorial staff joined us at Z-arts with a Dinosaur Object Handling Box, filled with prehistoric artefacts that 145 children interacted with before being given a goody bag that contained additional educational elements.

Sarah stands at the front of a workshop with her arms open wide. She is wearing an Art With Heart T-shirt.

Facilitator & artist training

We ran a workshop for artsdepot’s artist network in which artists learned how to facilitate and develop their skills, with a focus on children and young people. In this session, run by Co-Creative Director Sarah Emmott, we explored different types of workshops, including teaching skills, making meaning and unpacking difficult subjects.

“This is a rare and important play. Aimed at children aged 7+, it sensitively helps them understand that friendship and family ties can still be strong, even when rocked by domestic challenges, and it does it in a way that’s so genuinely inclusive, it should be at the vanguard of all contemporary theatre practice.”

Liz O’Neill, CEO and Artistic Director of Z-arts.

“I enjoyed watching my pupils, who are deaf, loving the story unfold, and seeing themselves in it, through being deaf and also dealing parental separation. They also really got involved in discussion in the workshop with the interpreter present. They felt included.”

Teacher

“I was impressed with the issues raised. To have a performance that was accessible to young people without shying away from intensity was marvellous. Resolution was found but everything wasn’t just simply made happy and perfect. I think that it reflected reality and young people can be exposed to that reality.”

Parent

“The dinosaur looked real! I thought it was coming to get us!”

Child

‘Having the tickets given to us was amazing and I’m incredibly grateful for them. Being a single parent family, I would not have been able to go if I had to pay for them.’

Parent

“We’ve never been to something that my daughter has been able to access before.”

Parent

A graphic that reads Evaluation Report with an illustration of a T-Rex.

Stan toured across 7 venues for 6 weeks in 2022, engaging 1,699 audience members, 35% of which said that this was their first time visiting a theatre. Read about the production and wraparound participatory activity, and discover the impact it had on audiences in our evaluation report.

Click here to read our evaluation report

Two actors in school uniform perform a scene in front of an illustration of a school playground. There are captions on the backdrop and one of the actors uses BSL.

Two actors playing school children face a big projection of a T Rex. One of the actors touches the dinosaur, while the other cowers on the floor.

An actor playing a school child looks nervous as they stand in the doorway of the house on our stage set.

Two actors playing children sit in front of a projection of a school playground. One of them does an impression of a dinosaur while the other looks on and smiles.

Two actors playing school children hold hands and walk towards a wooden doorway that glows with a golden light.

An actor playing a mother reaches out and smiles at an actor playing her child. The son character looks tense and is turning away from the mother.

Actors playing a son and mother discuss Dad leaving

With thanks to

Ross Thompson: Sam

Alexandra James: Alex

Mum: Gemma Green

Written by: Sarah Emmott

Directed by: Jonathan McGrath

Movement Director: Deb Pugh

Sound design and Production Manager: Adam Steed

Lighting Design: Alex Willy

Facilitation by Sarah Emmott and Chelsea Morgan

BSL consultation: Raphaella Julien

Animation by Triple Dot Makers

Set and costume design by Irene Jade

Promotional illustration by Noe Baba

Producer: Rachel Moorhouse

Associate producer: Megan Holland

Audience development producer: Mary-Jayne Russell de Clifford

Audience development producer: Jodean Sumner

With thanks to the creatives who helped in the research and development of Stan: Rachel Moffatt-Feldman, Adam Eastwood, Dan Steele, Stephen Collins, Vilma Jackson, Rebecca Kenny and Kristian Wall.

Commissioned by Z arts. Funded by Arts Council England. With support from Greater Manchester Combined Authority, The Lady Neville Charity, The Granada Foundation, Touchstones and the Backstage Trust. This project has been made possible by a grant from Postcode Community Trust, a grant-giving charity funded entirely by players of People’s Postcode Lottery.